This article analyzes the preventative measures the movie industry must take in order to protect their copyrights and stifle piracy. It is made clear that various factors, particularly the invent of broadband Internet, peer-to-peer networks, and improvements in video compression technologies have made such efforts extremely difficult. Thus the industry must exercise legal and technical means to battle competing markets. The entertainment industry is aiming to hold the information industry accountable for all copyright violations. Furthermore, they are urging the information industry to also institute anti-piracy technologies in all software and hardware. By elaborating on the previous legal battles that complicate the debate on whether to hold the user or manufacturer accountable for piracy, the authors device a better solution that assigning blame. The article suggests that the movie industry should adapt their supply chain to provide cheaper, quality, convenient products than any illegal form could offer.

This new model would force the industry to reconstruct how they distribute, exhibit, and produce films. The second section delineates the current framework of the industry tracing back to the 1970s. The weaknesses are exposed and the industry's long-term "techo-phobia" is identified as a major culprit. The next section brings attention to the legal battles of the MPAA and the RIAA to protect copyrights and further discusses the benefits and setbacks of the DMCA. Two organizations have been assembled to try and deal with these problems; one is the Digital Media Device Association and the other is Project Hudson, which is made up of technology giants such as Samsung, Toshiba, and Nokia. Various solutions are proposed, such as digital watermarking and smart-card technology, but all have flaws. Because neither legal nor technological solutions effectively can eliminate piracy, the most sensible answer is economically based. In terms of distribution, the article suggests creating e-Blockbusters near ISPs, which would enable consumers to rent movies in a cheap and accessible manner. For exhibition, theaters must adapt by adjusting the "window scheme, offering differentiated digital viewing experiences, and developing fast-access storage to reduce portable media." Production will take on a purely digital form, reducing the need for human interaction almost completely.

There are plenty of viable options available to improve and sustain the movie industry; it is just a matter or time and technology. The aforementioned solutions can improve the industry and successfully eliminate piracy if executed effectively. The article articulates my very thesis and attempts to provide an answer as to how the movie industry can change to this digitally advancing world.

This New York Times article from 1997 shows how far piracy has come today. It emphasizes the difficulties the movie industry has to face now compared to eleven years ago. In the last year or so, the two blockbusters that hit the streets before their openings were the "Hulk" and "American Gangster." Although the Internet has made proliferation of these movies capable, bootlegs have existed for quite sometime. Back in 1997 "Men in Black," "Batman and Robin, and "Hercules" were leaked earlier than its intended opening and were available for purchase on the streets of New York for five dollars. The article isolates New York as the major hub for pirated motion pictures. Back then, the estimate of how much the industry loses from domestic revenues is about $250 million (compared to $6.1 billion in 2005).

The author suggest that bootlegs are acquired by people sneaking camcorders into advanced screenings. The films are often of bad quality, but consumers want what is new before anyone else. To clean up piracy, the government and individuals targeted the streets of New York. In 1992 when Spike Lee's film "Malcom X" came out, he and some friends went to 125th Street with baseball bats to scare vendors of bootleg films. The MPAA geared its efforts towards attacking duplication labs in New York; the raids led to the seizure of over 10, 000 bootleg videos. Besides selling copies on the street corners, bootleggers set up booths, akin to tourist attractions, that stock the most recent films for purchase.

This article is a great comparison of how piracy has developed with technology. Pirates are now almost invisible due to the Internet, the quality of the films pirated is of superior quality, and dissemination is almost impossible to contain. The losses incurred by the industry back then have significantly increased and the pirates are more organized. A brief discussion of the drastic changes that have occured in the last decade will help contextualize the efforts the MPAA has had to undergo.